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The Shootings


Tex
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Personally I think both parties are to blame, which is why I started that goofy topic yesterday. The problem now is what we do about it. Do we demilitarize the police force? Do we ramp it up? Or is this thing unsolvable? If so, how did it get THIS bad?

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If so, how did it get THIS bad?

 

In the long term, institutional racism going back centuries fostering a culture of distrust of police from the black community. One could look at Driver's post in the other thread for some of the details. And then you can look at pretty much any history book for an even larger view.

 

In the short term, and what turned this into a crisis, was a series of sensationalized stories from social and the national media. There's no evidence that such shootings are on the upswing, but the media has the power to magnify things by dropping everything to focus on them, especially when they boost ratings and confirm the media's own prejudice. One can look towards the stories about shark attacks a few years back or the disappearance of pretty young women as other examples of sensationalized stories in the same vein.

 

An undercurrent of distrust became reinforced. A significant problem was that these stories were often based on first reports that turned out to just not be true. So calls for justice for heavily hyped victims like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown appeared to fall flat when no convictions came from them, further exasperating tensions.

 

During this, a radicalization appeared most often called Black Lives Matter. On the surface, the intellectuals brought out the points of institutional racism, militarization of the police, and such. But inside that was something pretty rotten and racist itself. Calls for justice before the facts could come out. And even after exculpatory facts come out, opinions remain durable. Rioting and destruction of people's businesses and livelihood. Hatred of police as a whole as not only tolerated, but fairly commonplace. Calls for violence against police tolerated.

 

As stated earlier, the national media largely encouraged this, treating the movement as the good guys with little in the way of scrutiny of what was lying beneath, further encouraging radicalization. One acts with more confidence when they are the heroes.

 

In many ways, this movement is similar to Donald Trump's rise. Yes, both have a basic point. But both are a dysfunctional representation of expressing that point that should be shunned by all equally. There is nothing good down the road either are setting out for us.

 

So anyway, yeah. Long term, this has been building for awhile. Short term, a radical outgrowth hijacked a legit problem ushered in by bad journalism. As for solutions, I've got nothing. So much of this is based on emotional perception and triggering events will happen as long as police are armed, that I don't think there's a policy that can really make a difference in easing these tensions.

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Near as I can tell, the best solution is to get Trump elected President which would actually incite a new civil war or a coup that results in America being broken up into smaller nations that fall along ideological and/or geographic lines.

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I know Driver was joking, but I will point out that these incidents of black people and cops being shot are happening in a rather diverse set of political and geographical areas ranging from rural to urban, deep red to deep blue. There's really no getting away from it.

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I feel like we've lost all sense of perspective and people can just act bad because it's social norm. Tonight I wanted to go downtown to a Frida Kahlo thing and decided not to. Glad I didn't apparently some dude decided to fire on the SA Police Department Headquarters a few blocks away.

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When stuff like this happens I always think about Lincoln and what he said about freeing black people. It's ironic, because he's known as the great emancipator, but in reality he just didn't think it would work. He knew that there was so much bad blood between blacks and whites that shit like this would happen.

 

Back to what Poe said the media seems to revel in it. You can argue, as Marc and Driver did, about how many whites and blacks were killed by cops, but the fact is that the media loves stories about blacks being killed by cops. Make no mistake, they love this stuff and don't give a shit about the victims.

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I think you're overstating. Yes, the media love stories with legs so they don't have to resort to actual journalism to gather ratings,

(hiring reporters with degrees is expensive!) but I don't think it's fair to say everyone in every media job doesn't give a shit about

the victims.

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I've always liked you even though we rarely agree about anything but you are incredibly naive if you think the media gives two shits about anything other than what sells. Cops killing whites does not sell. Cops killing blacks is huge for them. If you don't see that you are either not paying attention, or delusional, or just dumb as shit.

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I see where Tex is coming from. I mean, as humans, I'm almost certain the media does care about the victims. No one is that heartless. Well, some people are, but that's another topic.

 

But the media does tend to focus on what brings in ratings, creates controversy, drama, etc. Out of the over 500 killings by LE this year, almost half are white. Yet you don't hear anything about that. You only hear about it when someone who is of color, or whatever the PC term is these days, is killed. Why? Because right now, racism is a hot topic, an issue that is in the forefront of everything. If it wasn't, you wouldn't hear anything about it.

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I will put in one controversial political note. When I said that there was nothing that could be done, it wasn't completely true. Obama could have stepped in and turned down the heat early on if he'd chosen. Sometimes it's up to the adults on one side to tamp down on the excesses of their side (see the pains Bush went to in order to avoid anti-Muslim fears post-9/11). Obama really only pays lip service to that duty, and usually ends up inflaming things further.

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I've always liked you even though we rarely agree about anything but you are incredibly naive if you think the media gives two ****s about anything other than what sells. Cops killing whites does not sell. Cops killing blacks is huge for them. If you don't see that you are either not paying attention, or delusional, or just dumb as ****.

Not any of those. I AM part of the media-not a very important part; I just deliver live traffic and news for the tri-state area. It's not as if I'm a real journalist or anything. But I can tell you how high emotions run in most of the real journalists I know in this area and in this way, I can't see where Seattle would be all that different from the rest of the nation. We have a few idiots and those everyone criticizes for being what you describe, but for the most part, all are caring humans. We hold back info when we know that not everyone in the family has yet been made aware of the death of a loved one, we cry when strangers die and we have report on the circumstances. A couple years ago, a local TV station lost 2 reporters in a helicopter crash and food, gifts and condoloences were sent to the complex for days.

 

I know "cops killing whites" doesn't sell like "cops killing an unarmed black teen" does but that doesn't immediately make every person in the media a cold, heartless machine.

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I think that we need to define what "the media" means.

Are we talking CEOs, journalists, or what? I hate the term "media" because it is so broad. Especially when you get into extremely broad strokes.

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I don't think ALL MEDIA is bad-- but the journalistic integrity that existed in the past is non-existent.

 

This is what happens when corporations buy out the new outlets and shutter newspapers in favor of websites-- were they are not giving us the news, but selling d space and therefor rely on sensationalistic click-bait headlines.

 

This isn't totally new, Hearst controlled the narratives of the papers he owned. Go watch Citizen Kane. It's just a far bigger problem now, exacerbated by the fact that a lot of people, especial those involved in their creation, don't understand that blogging/tweeting is NOT journalism.

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I agree with Seth that that modern mainstream media shares a lot of the blame in curating the culture that's led to the events of the past week. Many things being biased, sensationalized, and often full of some type of agenda has played a part in shaping the divisiveness that's been a big issue in the past year or two.

I think social media has played a part in deconstructing things to an unfortunate level as well. It is helpful that everyone has easy access to many different communications platforms that allow us to instantly broadcast to the masses, even now with live video. But it also emboldens many to say things publicly that they never would have in years past. Many of the more well intentioned and good hearted people are hesitant to speak up, and many awful people are using it as a megaphone to shout hateful and divisive rhetoric from the rafters. It also doesn't help when a certain orange faced individual often has diarrhea of the mouth and encourages that kind of habit amongst his demographic.

I honestly don't think things are as bad as they could be. They at least aren't nearly as bad the last time similar issues came about in the late 60's. It's just that the narrative of it has changed so drastically and is being weaponized in a worse way than ever before.

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Near as I can tell, the best solution is to get Trump elected President which would actually incite a new civil war or a coup that results in America being broken up into smaller nations that fall along ideological and/or geographic lines.

So, does that mean you're going to be Driver Tecumseh Sherman under the command of General Trump...or will that be General Gingrich against the leftie hordes?

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Oh man... is there a third option? Like hiding in a cave somewhere?

I am seriously looking at moving to Canada and renouncing my citizenship after I get my pension in 9 years. F*ck this sh*t.

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